aXE Open source Accessibility Rules Engine by Deque Systems

Deque Systems a leading Accessibility company has open sourced their accessibility rules engine aXE which is a light weight JavaScript library that will work with any modern browser & technology. Developers can leverage the aXe rules engine to automate their accessibility scans & get more accurate results, with more than 15yrs of experience Deque Systems brings a unique product that differentiates itself from other open source accessibility tools like quail, tanaguru etc…

Announcement by Preety Kumar CEO of Deque Systems

I am thrilled to make our award-winning accessibility rules engine available as open source so we as a community can build upon 15 years of industry-leading accessibility research and best practices.

Accessibility experts can now stop duplicating efforts and work from a common set of rules. Developers and testers can quickly get consistent, reliable, and meaningful results that are actionable. Automated accessibility testing results become easy to understand, extend, and integrate.

The Accessibility Engine, or aXe, is a compact JavaScript library that is open source and available on GitHub. This library makes integration into any development and testing tool simple and quick. Use aXe with any JavaScript framework and any modern browser. Enjoy zero false positive results, eliminating noise and frustration.

Deque’s mission is digital equality. If we are to achieve that mission together, we need to take a new approach. Our community goal is to create the most trusted set of accessibility rules anywhere. We invite cooperation rather than competition. Join us in making automated accessibility testing truly “accessible”!

We hope you will join us in our mission and help bring equality to the digital world.

Sincerely,

Preety Kumar

Getting started

First download the package:
npm install axe-core –save-dev

Now include the javascript file in each of your iframes in you fixtures or test systems:

Now insert calls at each point in your tests where a new piece of UI becomes visible or exposed:
axe.a11yCheck(document, function (results) {
ok(results.violations.length === 0, ‘Should be no accessibility issues’);
// complete the async call
…
});

More

For more information on the aXe accessibility rules engine please refer to the following links.

More Accessibility Articles

About Raghavendra Satish Peri

Peri as he is fondly called brings in rich experience in Digital Accessibility; He has worked with various clients ranging from Travel & Hospitality, ecommerce, Entertainment, Banking & Finance. Presently, he works at Deque Software as Digital Accessibility Consultant slaying web accessibility & mobile accessibility challenges.